The two major parties, having already switched sides on trade, have apparently decided to switch sides on campaign finance restrictions too. Writes Kevin Drum:
I'm a little wishy washy on campaign finance reform myself. There are serious First Amendment issues involved, but at the same time trying to regulate the flood of money in the electoral process is a legitimate concern. But Bush's statement is completely out of left field. Just ban all political advertising? Does he even understand that the First Amendment has something to say about that?It's nice to see some on the left finally waking up and understanding why restrictions like this are not a good idea. Back in college I used to argue with socialist professors who insisted that all expenditures on political speech needed to be centrally distributed - in other words, you could only buy advertising saying what the government would let you say about the government. And if you google the phrase "money is speech", you find a whole mess of Democrats and other leftists ridiculing the notion that Americans should have the right to express their political views in ways that cost money.Probably not. Like I said before, he's like a guy in bar. We should just ban all the advertising, that's what I say! And his understanding of the issue never goes any further.
Welcome to my side.
Tomorrow, I hope to post my review of Control Room. My two-word review: friggin' brilliant.
Posted by digamma at August 22, 2004 12:01 AM | TrackBackDrum is wrong and so are you, Mark.
Leftists dont want to stiffle free speech; this is the classic miscontrual of the traditional leftist position.
We want laws that ban perennial campaigning; we want free air time for candidates of all parties.
I never have understood why you sneer so much at the leftist position. Do you *like* legalised bribery, which is what political donations by PACS actually are? Do you *want* Nike to lie, call the lie "free speech", and then with its massive funding, outspend the grassroots people who tell the truth? That's the "free market" position, after all.
Maaan, and just when you were coming around, too..
Posted by: RETARDO at August 25, 2004 05:06 PMYou only thought I was "coming around" because at some point you got the mistaken idea that I was a Bush-supporting hawk like Nieporent, which I never was. I believe you thought so because at one point I expressed irritation that the two of you were monopolizing Baseball Primer with a personal rivalry, although I wasn't taking a side, and had only ever supported the antiwar position.
I address the substance of your argument here.
Thanks for reading. You should look into adding an RSS feed to your site. I know you're on Blogger, but Eschaton has a well-working one, so it should be possible.
Posted by: digamma at August 25, 2004 06:40 PMNah, I thought so because the only substantive exchange between us that I can remember, aside the Neosporin thing, was about this very issue.
You have no idea how much it galls leftists when someone advances the money=speech argument in the sense that they try to claim moral high ground on first amendment protection. Forgive the analogy but this is rather like when certain Reaganites used to say that they cared more about race issues than "Liberals". It's not just wrong, it's outrageous.
At the heart of it is this principle: if money equals speech then speech is unequal; "more speech" is uttered, as it were, by those with the most money. And who has the most money?
I like reading your stuff, though. I always thought that you were more of a real libertarian than a fraud libertarian like certain tribalist pigs. More of an Independent Institute guy than a Neosporin-type. Uh, right?
Posted by: RETARDO at August 25, 2004 09:00 PM